Posts Tagged ‘sfgov’

Well, let’s go way back for starters, back when the Bicycle Thieves Of San Francisco aimed to steal your entire bike. They’d sometimes get caught with stolen bikes and car jacks.*

But these days, it’s bike parts thieves seem to settle for, so cyclists need to protect not just the frame but also the wheels, the saddle and the headset, and other bits too, if you can.

So that means that today’s bike thief needs room to store stuff and that’s where Division Street comes in. It’s been a good place to park a vehicle or pitch a tent without being bothered too much, plus it’s close to the action – it’s close to 7th and Market and the Main Library.

This is what things looked like under the I-80 before Fall 2015 as I remember things:

This is how I remember things being for a decade or two.

But then all of a sudden, instead of a few tents here and there, a bunch of tents popped up. They filled up practically every possible space in lines that stretched from Costco #144 all the way to South Van Ness. I’m guessing this occurred anywhere from mid-to-late November 2015 to early December at the latest.

And this is the other side of the street closer to 10th Street at the end of December:

I’ll tell you, most of these hundreds of people are NOT bike thieves.

So why did they show up here at the end of 2015?

The Holidays? I could see why the SFPD et al might want to ignore things until after Thanksgiving, Christmas and whatnot.

El Nino? This would be a good place to stay out of most of the rain, of course, and the forecast was for lots of it coming soon.

Super Bowl 50? The corporate party part of Super Bowl 50 had lots of knock-on effects for SFGov – it seemed like each and every SF Department was gearing up. At the time I thought, well, this doesn’t look too good either, if this is the alternative to homeless people hanging out near Super Bowl City in the Financial.

Availability of Tents? I remember seeing truck upon truck delivering stuff here, something like an FM radio station with “Chuy in the Morning” written on the side, something like that. So sure, food, but tents too? IDK.

So IDK, one supposes that all these street lights about town have photovoltaic-type switches that have gotten occluded (ala putting a piece of paper on the right side of my car’s dashboard to turn the headlights on / waving your hand in front of my TV to cover up the sensor to get it to go dimmer) over the months and years and that’s why they burn all the live-long day, for weeks, months, and what’s next, years?

Anyway, here’s the other lamp on my short block – I’ve never shown you this one afore.

ASSIGNMENT DESK: Hey SFGov, how much does it cost to this light in the daytime for a year? Multiply that by how many lights?

I’m sure the HOT ppl come out here “all the time,” out here west of Masonic and north of the Panhandle, but I never really see them, certainly not in a distinctive vehicle like this:

I’ll tell you, the 21 Hayes was working just fine over the weekend, which just happened to be the weekend opening time of Super Bowl City. That means that you’d see empty or emptyish 21 Hayeses on empty streets like at 6:30 AM. And you’d see two buses together as well, and this is important, they’d be heading in OPPOSITE DIRECTIONS and not bunched up tailgating each other. That’s the key, MUNI.

Anyway, if MUNI spends all sorts of time and attention and (our) money to focus on one weekend, it can operate a decent bus line for a handful of ppl early in the AM – that’s the lesson I’m learning from over the past weekend.

So that’s it, that’s about as close as I’m going to get to #SB50, now that the NFL ppl have hauled off their garish “50” ad from Alamo Square.

I’ll be on the lookout for more HOT vehicles on patrol, but I think it’ll be 2017 afore I see another one out here…

“After more than 10 years of hosting one of the most anticipated race registration lotteries, lighting up the streets of San Francisco and handing out those coveted Tiffany necklaces to finishers, the Nike Women’s Half Marathon will not be returning to Union Square in 2016.”

Here’s your NIMBY problem – the Presidio and RPD don’t/didn’t mind this route, but millionaire residents of the Western Addition and the Great Sand Wastes certainly do/did.

And speaking of RPD, SFGov, DPW, the SFMTA, and all the rest of the “City Family*” Alphabet soup, they’re always happy to oblige but it’s going to cost you (NIKE) big big bucks to operate here, more here than anywhere else in ‘Merica (except possibly NYC – it can go either way, depending).

And then there’s the “bandit” issue, which we’re not supposed to talk about, but bandits is everywhere, right? So I don’t know – we probably have more than our fair share of banditas. grantedStill, I don’t think that could kill a tradition.

I don’t know. There’s a story here though – Enquiring Minds Want To Know.

What if some kind of SFGov fee got increased by like 1000% all of a sudden? What if SFGov has done the wrong thing, once again?

Static friction is what an event needs to overcome to get started here (like, OMG, it’s going to cost us how much?!), but Nike managed to overcome that reaction, a decade ago. OTOH, your kinetic, that’s what wears you down, year after year, until you just say, “Screw you guys, I’m going home.”

So, if you power your Nissan Leaf all-electric car or ZERO all-electric motorcycle with clean Hetch Hetchy hydroelectricity, SFGov is saying that your commute to work isn’t “sustainable.” OTOH, if you ride in a diesel MUNI bus, your commute is “sustainable? OK, maybe.

Hey, what about the method that SFGov uses to fund retirement pay and medical benefits for all its employees, past, present, and future? Is that sustainable, SFGov? Oh no? OK, SFGov.

And if one of my bikes gets a flat tire, have I ever said to myself, “Oh no, it’s an emergency!”

Nope.

But one supposes that if you had some free money to spend and you wanted to appeal to your bo-bo constituancy, you’d offer the same program.

ASSIGNMENT DESK: Well, this one writes itself. The hardest part will be finding an appealing subject who’s actually used this program already. Take some photos of the victim, you know, probably a her, and make sure have the Financh in the background in the photos, and then throw in a few quotes from a Department Head, and BAM! – you’ve got yourself a Story.

*At some places down in the valley, if you get sick at work your Free Ride Home will be so, so baller, you’ll feel like a billionaire, you know, temporarily anyway, and you’ll tell all your friends about it, and they’ll be so impressed.